


Knights of Ghosts and Shadows

by Moontyger



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, inevitable Lich King references, minor Legion spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-08-10 00:32:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7823323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moontyger/pseuds/Moontyger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two former princesses find that the time spent idle in Netherlight Temple leads them to form an alliance neither would have expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Imkerin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imkerin/gifts).



Calia had told herself that she knew what revealing herself would mean. Yes, she’d be stared at and yes, people would whisper, but after all these years, she was above all that. It would have been selfish to remain hidden, to value her privacy over the safety of the entire world, and besides, she had so little left to lose.

But she’d forgotten how used she’d become to going unnoticed. A Princess must be accustomed to attention because she attracts it wherever she goes, but Calia hasn’t claimed that title in years. Once, the sidelong glances wouldn’t have disturbed her overly, but now, they cut. She felt as though the years in isolation had allowed the calluses on her psyche to fade away, leaving only fresh, new skin, vulnerable to injury from every thorn she even came near.

It wore away at her until snapping at someone was inevitable. It was sheer chance that her target was Moira Thaurissan; she hadn’t been the only one prone to staring, but she was the closest when Calia’s patience finally gave out.

“Stop staring!”

“I’m just curious,” Moira protested. “You came out of nowhere, after all these years.” 

“You and everyone else,” Calia replied. Her voice was harsh, but she no longer cared enough to soften it. “I know what you’re thinking.”

“Do ye now?” Moira folded her arms and raised her eyebrows expectantly.

“You’re wondering if I hid because I was afraid of my brother or because I’d been working with him.”

Moira shook her head. “I know better than that. Muradin and I aren’t the best of friends, as I’m sure ye’ve heard, but we’re still family. I know ye weren’t working with your brother. I just wondered where you’d been all this time.”

“Does it matter? It’s not as though I could go home. Arthas took that from me, along with everything else.”

“You could try to reclaim it,” Moira offered. “After we drive the Legion back from Azeroth, ye’d find plenty eager to restore Lordaeron.”

“Have you _seen_ Lordaeron lately?” Calia shook her head. “There’s nothing to reclaim - nothing that anyone living would want, that is.”

“So ye’re just giving up on it?”

“I gave up on it long ago.” Calia’s tone of voice made clear that that was her final word on the matter, and to drive it home, she turned her back on the dwarven queen regent. It was true, what she’d said: Lordaeron was long gone. But that didn’t explain why she’d stayed there instead of seeking shelter elsewhere. There were enough refugees that she might well have gone unnoticed, if that’s what she’d wanted. Or she could have formally requested shelter from Stormwind, as the royal family of Gilneas seemed to have done. But somehow, she’d found herself unable to leave, even as the kingdom itself became unrecognizable. Maybe it was true, that old saying that the king – or queen, as the case may be – was the land, because these days, she was unrecognizable, too.  
Perhaps that was why the next time they spoke, she was the one to initiate the conversation once again. Moira was in Netherlight Temple as she often was, but today she was agitated, frowning to herself and pacing back and forth like she was trying to wear some sort of protective runic pattern into the flagstones all by herself. Calia watched her for awhile in silence, but finally, she had to say something.

“You don’t have to stay here, you know. If you’re needed, you can take the portal back here at a moment’s notice.”

Moira paused mid-step, then slowly lowered her foot and turned to stare at her. It wasn’t a friendly state, but Calia hadn’t expected it to be; rumors of Moira’s temper had reached even her, despite her deliberate obscurity. There was a reason the other priests had made themselves so scarce today and it had nothing to do with distrusting Calia or urgent business elsewhere – or at least, not any more urgent than any other day when the Legion were invading. “Aye, I know.”

“And yet you’re still here, despite obviously not wanting to be.”

“Doesn’t it ever bother ye, being stuck here rather than out where all the action is?”

“I wouldn’t have thought you’d seen much combat,” Calia pointed out. Certainly the Dark Irons were a force to be reckoned with, but it was rare for their Empress to take the field. “As for myself, I’ve seen all I want to see.”

Moira looked skeptical. “And yet here ye are, volunteering for a war.”

“Not _a_ war. _The_ war, the only one that really matters.” With perhaps the exception of the war against the Lich King, but Calia hadn’t been able to bring herself to participate in that. She knew what he’d become, what he’d done, but on some level, Arthas would always be her bratty little brother. She knew better than to think she could kill him.

“And yet ye’re not fighting in it.”

“Not directly,” Calia admitted. “But if you’d prefer that, I suppose there’s no reason we couldn’t. What I said about using the portal is as true if we chose to go fight the Legion ourselves for awhile as if we went elsewhere.”

Moira stared at her again, this time in what seemed more like shock than the sort of measured scrutiny that had prompted their first conversation. “Ye’d come with me?”

“Of course. I might have lost Lordaeron, but Azeroth is my home as well. I wouldn’t be here if I weren’t willing to fight for it.” 

“All right.” Moira nodded decisively. “Let’s see what we can do.”

It had been some time since Calia had been on a battlefield, but some things you never forget. Not that she hadn’t often wished she _could_ forget these particular memories; sometimes when she closed her eyes, she could still see that terrifying flight from the castle like it was yesterday. But it stood her in good stead now, steeled her spine and let her stand face-to-face with a demon three times her size and not even blink.

She’d had her doubts about Moira’s capabilities, but she proved to be a good partner, blasting the demons with void bolts while Calia’s atonement kept them both healed. More, while she hadn’t truly wanted to have to fight, Calia found herself enjoying it. There was something oddly satisfying about a truly righteous war, with enemies she neither had sympathy for nor felt even hints of guilt for the lack of it.

By the time they returned to the temple, she was exhausted. They were both dirty, Moira’s gown was torn, and Calia’s robe was stained with blood from a wound she’d been late to heal. But it was a good tired, complete with the sense of wellbeing and a job well done that she’d so rarely felt during her life in hiding or even before, when her father’s traditional ways prevented her from doing anything truly useful.

Calia smiled at Moira and the expression felt so strange that she had to wonder how long it had been. Had she forgotten how to be happy without even realizing it?

“It seems we make a pretty good team.”

“Aye, we do at that. Those demons didn’t know what hit them.” Moira returned the smile and Calia couldn’t help thinking that it was a shame she didn’t do it more often. It made her look not just pretty, but approachable, like the woman she was beginning to realize she wanted to know better. 

“You were right; it was better to get out there and get our hands dirty.”

“Sometimes, there’s nothing for it but to do it yerself.”

Calia nodded, but her thoughts had already slipped away. Back to the past, as they so often did. And who could blame them? Most of the time, her present wasn’t anything to write home about, even if she’d had a home to write to. “My father would have hated it, that I was out there,” she said softly, speaking mostly to herself. “He didn’t think a princess should be on the battlefield.”

“Aye, mine felt that way as well. He never wanted a daughter, thought women were weak and useless. But that’s all the more reason to get ourselves out there, show them they were wrong.”

It was funny, how such a little thing could make you feel like you understood someone. “Tomorrow, then?”

Moira nodded. “Aye. And this time we’ll take the mole machine.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five months later

“No, no, no!” Bishop Faol shouted. “Don’t cast a shield to take the blow. _Raise_ your shield – the one you’ve got on your arm.”

Calia’s cheeks reddened, but she didn’t protest, merely tried harder to remember to use the shield when he attacked her again, glowing staff swinging toward her head in a blow that she already knew would hurt if she didn’t do something. Her shield felt so heavy that it was astonishing she could have forgotten it was there, and yet she had, acting with the instincts of the priest she was and not the paladin she was trying to become.

She blocked it this time, the impact strong enough to send shooting pains down her already aching arm, and swung the sword in her other hand. That part, she was better at, though it should have been equally foreign to her former training.

By the time Faol ended the training session, Calia’s shield arm was completely numb and she could barely make her fingers work to release it, prying them open one by one with her sword hand.

“I suppose that wasn’t completely terrible – given the circumstances.”

Calia merely nodded, refusing to be put off by the backhanded compliment. She’d spent too many years accompanying Bishop Faol to be bothered by the harsher demeanor he’d acquired in undeath. “I know I’m not as young as the typical student, but I _am_ improving. Thank you again for your efforts.”

It was a relief to return to her small room here in the temple, the room she’d insisted on remaining in despite the offer of better from the young king of Stormwind. As far as Calia was concerned, she was no longer royalty, and she didn’t want to be treated as though she were.

She’d bathed and changed and had begun cleaning her weapons and armor when she heard the knock on the door that she’d been waiting for. “Come in.”

As she always did, Moira strode in as though she owned the place, head held high and steps strong and sure. She shut the door behind her and looked Calia over with an air nearly as proprietary. “New bruises today, I see. Are ye still set on this training?”

“You’ve seen the casualty numbers,” Calia pointed out calmly. “This situation is exactly why the Order of the Silver Hand was created to begin with.”

“The order yer brother betrayed,” Moira pointed out. “Ye don’t talk about it, but I know they won’t have forgotten.”

“They haven’t,” Calia admitted, sweeping her hair to one side as Moira approached and began rubbing her shoulders, strong dwarven hands warm and glowing with the Light. Calia could have healed her bruises and sore muscles herself, but she let Moira do it, allowing her eyes to gradually drift shut as the pain and tension slowly dissipated. “But if they look at me and see Arthas, they see what I’ve lost as well. They won’t turn me away.”

“But they don’t exactly welcome ye either,” Moira commented, in the tone of one who knew all too well what that kind of grudging acceptance was like.

Calia shrugged. It was true, but like most things in her life, there was nothing she could do about it, so she accepted it and moved on. “You’ve been very patient,” she said, changing the subject. “I know you miss our missions together.”

“Aye, but we can’t have ye on the battlefield before yer trainin’s done.” Moira left off her massaging and walked around Calia. She removed the armor from Calia’s lap and set it aside so that she could take its place. “And it’s nae so bad having ye spending more time here.”

Calia smiled as she slid her arms around Moira’s waist and leaned in to kiss her. “I can agree with that.”

She’d never expected to end up in a relationship with Moira; even their friendship had been unlikely. But she’d never expected to train as a paladin either, yet somehow the same event had precipitated both.

It had been a few weeks after she and Moira had started doing missions together. Even now, Calia can’t say for sure if they got overconfident or were just unlucky, but somehow, the demons managed to separate them. Calia hadn’t even noticed at first, too intent on trying to heal through the hellfire to finish off an infernal to realize she was alone.

By the time she found Moira, it was almost too late: she’d been severely injured, magical shield fading and shadows nearly gone, lying helpless with a doom guard standing over her, ready to finish her off. Calia still wasn’t sure how she’d managed to stop it and get them out of there, but once she had, she knew two things: she wanted to become a better fighter, more capable of protecting those in her company, and that, much to her surprise, the idea of losing Moira filled her with something akin to panic.

She hadn’t meant to kiss her; she hadn’t consciously planned anything of the kind. But when she knew Moira was going to live, Calia had been so relieved that it seemed the most natural thing in the world, despite the carnage all around them and the river of fel fire less than fifty feet distant.

If she’d thought about it, she’d never have done it. Battlefield camaraderie wasn’t enough excuse for taking such liberties. Yet to her surprise, Moira kissed her back, and not only was she not averse to doing it again under more ordinary circumstances, she’d been eager to do so. Unlike almost everything else in Calia’s life, this one thing had worked out for the best, and she’d grabbed onto it with both hands.

Perhaps it was a sign from the Light, or perhaps it was merely her turn for some good luck at last. Either way, it reminded Calia that despite a decade of life amongst her ghosts, both literal and metaphorical, she herself was still alive. Calia knew all too well that no amount of armor or training could ensure that she remained so, but while she was, she intended to enjoy it.


End file.
